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Hi all!!! It’s been such a long time and it’s so nice to read about all of your recoveries. I’ve been helping a friend who’s struggling with insomnia and it made me think of all of us last year around this time of the year all beginning to practice ACT. What a time! It’s really wonderful to see that we have all gotten past the suffering and resistance that comes with and perpetuates insomnia. I definitely feel healed from it, but just like with most of you, sleep isn’t perfect and it’s very different than what it used to be pre-insomnia but I’m totally ok with it these days and relaxed about it. The 2 mains differences are: I still wake up in the middle of the night, although I do have nights of no wake ups at all. Some nights I fall back asleep quickly, some I don’t. I just don’t mind it anymore, don’t struggle or see it as bad. I always get sleep no matter what and it’s almost always very refreshing, so I don’t care when sleep doesn’t come back as easily in the middle of the night. The second main difference is that I used to be someone who needed 7-8 hours of sleep, and definitely more on weekends. Now, between 5-6 is all my body needs to feel refreshed, it’s almost like it learned how to do all of the regenerative work that happens during sleep quicker and more efficiently. Maybe this change would have happened even if I hadn’t gone through insomnia, maybe it was a change that came with age. I remember my mom’s sleep schedule was very similar to what mine is like now, so there could be some genetic influence there too. In terms of attitude towards sleep, besides dissolving all the fear, anxiety, and obsession with sleep, the very last step that was needed for me to heal: I stopped grieving for those 8 hours of sleep I used to get pre-insomnia or wanting so badly to “sleep in” on weekends and now I truly enjoy being up early in the morning each day (I’m talking 5, 6 am, sometimes even 4 if I go to bed around 9ish). I love the quiet and stillness of the early morning these days. I always make a cup of coffee and lie back in bed to read while sipping it and I just get so much joy from the ritual. Also, the days last so long, I love that during the week I get some hours to relax, or work out, or cook before getting ready for work and so many hours on the weekends for a good balance between relaxing and being productive. It was incredible to me to see just how psychological insomnia really was. I used to feel really frustrated when people stated this because to me insomnia was purely a biological disorder, until I practiced ACT and saw just how dysfunctional my “relationship with sleep” was. There is a biological factor for sure as well, but I would say it’s 50/50, or at least it was for me! Anyway, I don’t mean to go on forever here. Just wanted to give an update after a year and it made me so happy to see you are all doing better as well!!! I’m more than happy to talk some more here or through email if anyone wants to be in touch or need a little advice. Big big hugs to everyone!
Thank you, Mac! Wishing you all of the same – and be patient with the journey 😉
Also, if my sleep ever goes back to being how it was originally I’ll definitely come back to report it!Hi all,
It’s been a little while – thank you for checking in, Deb 🙂
I think this will be my farewell post in the forum since I no longer feel like insomnia is a problem in my life but if anyone ever want to be in touch to talk about recovery please do feel free to email me: borgesbi at hotmail (Bianca Borges). I’m no expert and don’t have perfect sleep but I’m more than happy to talk about it and help with anything I can!Although my sleep continues to be far from perfect it is also very far from how bad it used to be and that’s good enough for me. I think my horrible struggle with insomnia during CBT-I was a desperate wish, hope, and expectation that my sleep would/should go back to”normal”, to how it was, and for that I blame my former sleep therapist (before working with Martin) who told me with certainty that my sleep would be completely recovered in just 4 weeks. I can’t put into words just how harmful this statement was to me in so many levels. In fact, if you are in Boulder (CO) I do not recommend working with Summit Behavioral Sleep Medicine, especially Vyga Kauffman (who did a TEDx talk on insomnia and surprisingly and ironically was trained by Donn Posner). I’m sorry if I sound resentful and negative – it was an absurd amount of time, money, and needless suffering because of bad implementation of CBT-I techniques. With Martin it was a whole new world: he was compassionate, thorough, and did a great job implementing the techniques but I think my mindset with CBT-I was already ruined from the previous treatment and I just couldn’t move forward with it. ACT is what really worked for me and I’m a big advocate for it (thanks always, Deb!)
Sleep has never returned to how it used to be but my life and my well being have. Life is normal again – I am back to being very active with social life, going out at night, exercising, going on hikes, dancing, taking classes. I think I understand now that my brain simply learned insomnia and it will never un-learn it so I decided to surrender to it once and for all. I was a complete normal sleeper for 32 years of my life and I must say acceptance of this loss hasn’t come easily, it’s been a process and ACT has helped me immensely with it. I don’t know that my sleep will ever be as awesome as it used to be but now I see my insomnia a little bit like a chronic illness – I have it for life, I can go into remission and I can have flare ups here and there, and that’s that. Fighting and feeling frustrated is not going to help any chronic illness, it will only make it worse. Reactivity, frustration, resistance is just a load of negativity on top of an already difficult situation so I’ve been learning more and more to just let it be. I won’t deny it feels abnormal and it’s beyond uncomfortable and unpleasant to be awake for several hours in the middle of the night but so are symptoms of an auto-immune condition (which I also have) and I know that fighting none of these is ever helpful.
Although it doesn’t happen often, these days I can easily detect what’s keeping me awake, and being able to do so not only takes away any fear or confusion but it also helps me relax into wakefulness, which subsequently brings sleep sooner or later. For me I’ve noticed wakefulness happens because of either one or a combination of these:
– sleep drive (varies from day to day without much explanation and I just ride with it. Earliest I go to bed is 10pm and latest is 12am, similar to how it used to be before insomnia actually. Earliest wake-up time is 6 am and latest is 8 am – a little different than before insomnia since the latest was 9 am or 10 am on weekends. I no longer keep track of times as strictly as I did before, sometimes I go to bed without remembering to look at the clock)
– arousal system ON for following reasons: too active or excited before bed time, situational anxiety, conscious/unconscious sleep anxiety, conscious/unconscious self-monitoring for sleep (toughest one to catch as it brings a high degree of alertness with no anxiety accompanying it)
– the plain old my-brain-just-KNOWS-wakefulness-in-the-middle-of-the-night and it is playing it out right now. This is the same thing gdsmom talked about: neural pathways in the brain.
These days when I detect the reason for wakefulness I don’t freak out like I used to with CBT-I, I don’t beat myself up for doing anything wrong. I just detect it and then relax and let it be.Since starting ACT my sleep has improved immensely but I also know that relapses happen and should be expected. I know that my brain will never really forget insomnia so I’m always kind of ready or accepting of a difficult night. I don’t dwell over a bad night and also don’t jump in excitement over a good night’s sleep. I just let sleep be!
I hope this post is helpful to all of you, and again, if anyone ever wishes to be in touch, feel free to do so! As always, wishing everyone a restful evening 🙂
Steve, Featherly, and Gdsmon, I’m so happy to know my post helped even if just a little. I know my sleep isn’t perfect but whatever I can do to help anyone through this (if I can) I’m eager and more than happy to. Ending at least the psychological struggle with insomnia is already a huge relief.
Another point I thought of that might be worth mentioning since I noticed it’s a big one for me: acceptance of wakefulness. We talk a lot about accepting difficult feelings and thoughts of insomnia but I think at the root of it all is simply our lack of acceptance towards our wakefulness. Being completely and utterly ok with being awake in the middle of the night has helped me drop the worries, the monitoring, and anxiety (for the most part). I think acceptance of wakefulness itself is what brought the careless feelings towards insomnia. Sometimes I still forget and get caught in not accepting, but the more I practice, the quicker I remember to accept just being awake. Paradoxically, almost always when I truly and whole heartedly accept wakefulness without any expectation to sleep whatsoever, I fall back asleep. If I don’t, it’s only because I don’t have enough sleep drive yet!
As always, hoping everyone will have a restful evening tonight – no expectation to sleep, just rest 🙂
Steve, what you described sounded a lot like my experience with CBTI actually – anxiety creeping in and out in the evening. I remember feeling fear of my anxiety, anxiety from the anxiety, it was horrible. Frustration was big back then too and still strikes for me more lightly these days. ACT is more abstract than CBTI, so for me, I know sometimes I’ll catch myself actually trying to NOT feel frustrated or anxious instead of accepting that I AM. Do you think it’s possible you might be doing something similar? For example, I told myself in the past a few times in the middle of feeling frustrated or anxious “It’s ok, I’m ok”. When in reality it wasn’t ok and I wasn’t ok, after all, there were negative thoughts and feelings going on. I was deceiving myself by using positive affirmation to make them go go away instead of really just sitting there with them. It can be tricky sometimes! For me, accepting means that my ONE and ONLY goal for the evening is to sit with what I’m experiencing and forget about sleep completely. I know if anxiety strikes, it’s not going to be that great a night of sleep anyway. The amygdala will most likely be activated through the night, so I might as well just have it as a goal for the evening to really really go into the fear I’m experiencing. It’s a good opportunity for practice, since the more we do it, the more the fear dissolves for good!
Featherly, I too experience frustration sometimes if an awakening happens to longer. It actually happened last night – I was too tired from work so I went to bed and fell asleep around 9:30ish pm and then was alert at some point. I haven’t looked at the clock for a while now in the middle of the night but decided to do it to see what techniques I might be using that are helpful. I saw it was 3:30 am – good solid 6 hours of sleep but awake at 3am, ugh. After being alert for a while, a little frustration kicked in and I noticed that doing 2 things helped:
1) Recognizing that I’m feeling frustrated in the first place and then reminding myself that as long as I’m restfully lying there, it will be enough to feel refreshed in the morning. Doing this shifted my mindset to being completely ok with being awake.
2) In order to restfully lie in bed I started paying attention to my breathing, sounds, sensations of the bed. Eventually after doing this a few times (mind interrupted with some annoying irrelevant thoughts), I started drifting off, and that feeling of I don’t care and don’t mind what happens, came over me. Consciousness stayed kind of far although I was still there to some degree, so I think I entered light sleep for the remaining hours (until 5:45am). Woke up feeling refreshed and energized.I’m not sure if describing this is helpful to you guys, I hope so. Let me know if I can explain anything else in any other way that may be more helpful. Like I said, my sleep is still flawed like I just described, but it’s the fighting and struggling that have gotten much much better, and as consequence, feeling completely refreshed during the day.
Thank you, Deb 🙂
Steve, my sleep is still very much flawed, trust me! It’s more me not minding sleep in general that has made a big difference. I’ve noticed I don’t pay much attention to how or how much I sleep anymore, counting hours, monitoring being awake or being asleep. I know that it is still flawed because I don’t have that experience of being out for the whole night until my alarm goes off in the morning but also I’m paying so little attention to my sleep that I can’t really tell how much I’m sleeping, or when I’m awake, or for how long, etc. I just know I feel great each day, never fatigued, sleepy, etc. I feel like letting go of all that has been incredibly helpful. I just turn everything off when I’m sleepy and let my body and mind rest in bed until alarm goes off each day (between 6-8am) – without paying attention to any details. I find it a helpful approach to adopt..to do your part (just the common sense stuff) and then just let go 🙂Interesting, many of us with sleep maintenance issues who have been able to tackle anxiety almost entirely seem to be left with just several awakenings through the night, as well as early awakenings. This must be a stage in healing for sleep maintenance – I also had a phase of SO many awakenings each evening, but now down to only 1 or 2 most evenings. Feeling totally calm and relaxed during these awakenings doesn’t make them all that bad at all 🙂 . Glad to see everyone doing so well at least feeling rested and not scared of insomnia!
Agree with Edgar in some points. I’m one of those people who used to sleep really well and needed around 7-8 hours every night to feel refreshed. Anything less than that was troubling back then. Now that my insomnia is better, I tend to get more like 6 or 6.5, sometimes even less and my body has truly adapted to it. These days I feel very refreshed on that amount of sleep or less, it’s like my body learned to do all the healing/regenerating/etc that is done during sleep, faster than it used to. Not struggling with insomnia seems to be a big piece of the puzzle though; only when I stopped fighting it I started feeling really refreshed regardless of the amount of hours slept!
Hi Featherly,
I have been in that same phase as you for a while now! I rarely get light sleep these days, only if a personal issue is bothering me. I still get awakenings in the middle of the night, usually around 3-4 am, but also like you, I tend to go back to sleep fairly quickly. I wake up way too early each day though, it’s rare that I sleep until my alarm goes off . When I was a normal sleeper I’d sleep in until 9 am on weekends and never woke up before my alarm on weekdays. Ahh, how I miss those days but I’m content enough with how things have been 🙂
I had a bump on the road recently: moving into a new place last week threw me off and I had several awakenings each evening for a week. Felt frustrated about it for a few days but finally caught it and slept well last night. I think things will go back to normal soon.
Nik – it takes sooo much patience. The best is to not have the expectation to sleep, but like you, I also have a harder time and forget to implement a no-expectation mindset after having a wave of good nights of sleep. I forget what Dr Guy calls it: sleep sabotage or something like that- I remembered he mentioned that’s expected and it seems to be very common. When we start sleeping well we start to fear experiencing insomnia again (which we know is a big causing factor of itself) and we also forget all the practice and techniques. Super tricky. It’s best to look out for sleep sabotage and know it can come at any time and be prepared to welcome the fear, remember the techniques and mindset!
Featherly, same here – towards the second half of the night it’s more likely that I either get light sleep or have awakenings, but have consistently been getting at least 4-5 hours of deep uninterrupted sleep, which these days seem to be very restorative and refreshing to my body!
*I guess I shouldn’t have put SR as an outside technique from ACT because Guy Meadows does recommend gentle sleep restriction. Big fan of it 🙂
Hi Padron!
Here’s my experience with it – I used only a simplified version of the techniques mentioned in the book a few times, perhaps 3 or 4 at the most. I imagined my anxiety as a yellow/orange circle of energy, like a chakra really. I would hold it dearly, as if it was a baby that I was holding and taking care of (this would last only a couple seconds since I can’t hold visualizations for longer than that). To me it never felt natural to do the more complex visualizations, I tried and it felt like a lot of work. After making these simple visualizations a few times, I began to only notice the thoughts and feelings and recognizing them for what they were, just the “same old sleep fear” thoughts. Once I was able to recognize them, they would go away very easily, without me necessarily trying to make them go away. Another technique that was helpful to me was to have an attitude of curiosity towards the feelings, thoughts, and sensations. A few times I was intrigued by the intensity of the sensations and would come to a realization : “Wow, yeah, no wonder I haven’t been sleeping, this is such an intense emotional state. I wonder why it got this intense? Or how? But that’s alright, for now I’ll just sit here with it and befriend it no problem”
I’m into week 7 of ACT and although sleep is still a little flawed, I’m thousands of miles away from how bad things were the past few months. One new thing that happened recently that I consider quite the healing: I can go to bed without being sleepy and I’ll fall asleep fast, which has been incredible. I gotta say though, as big a fan of ACT as I am, SR ( a gentle one) was beyond essential to recovery and maintenance of good sleep. I still do gentle SR and believe it’s a pretty fundamental piece of the puzzle! SC on the other hand, not so much (at least for me).
Also, overboard compensatory behaviors were my greatest mistake in perpetuating insomnia and I think now that my brain remembers insomnia I’ll probably be careful to not engage in overboard compensatory behaviors for life.Hope everyone is doing well and wishing a very restful night for everyone!
Pam – one thing that has been really helping me whenever I have a difficult night is a deep realization that struggling against it (with frustration, fear, or anger for example) really won’t help in any way. It sounds cliché but it’s so true. Insomnia in itself is already hard, so I tell myself – why add my own negativity towards it? My brain isn’t knowing exactly how to sleep and being frustrated about it won’t help. It’s like being mad or frustrated with my stomach for not digesting food properly, I’m sure that would only make things worse. Sleep is a biological function we can’t control (we can only help promote sleep) and being frustrated or fearful of it is counterproductive. Our bodies aren’t against us, they’re just a little out of whack and having patience and compassion towards its functions is important, even or specially if that function is a little off. Maybe remember to have compassion with your body if it’s not knowing how to sleep properly here and there and tell yourself you can still REST, that’s a big one that helps me too, knowing that I can at least rest if I can’t sleep.
Also, if fear and struggle arises, that’s more than OK! Don’t beat yourself up if these arise, just notice them 🙂
